I purchased this book years ago but didn’t pick it up to read it until I saw it had been made into a movie, to be released December 2015. It is an interesting book and an easy read, if not uneasy at times. The true tragedy of the story starts after a sperm whale rams and sinks the Essex. The men scramble to salvage what they can from the damaged vessel before she is completely lost.

Nathaniel Philbrick relies heavily on the eyewitness account of Thomas Nickerson, the cabin boy on the Essex, discovered in 1980. Owen Chase, the first mate, published his story with the help of a ghostwriter only nine months after being rescued. Other survivors also wrote their accounts but they aren’t as well-written, lacking the “authority and scope” of Chase’s account.

Philbrick doesn’t pull any punches when describing the suffering and overwhelming despair of the survivors as they have to resort to eating the corpses of their dead comrades, and then living with that memory for the rest of their lives. Some of the details get gruesome but it is the reality of their story, disgusting or not.

History fans, maritime history fans,

The amount of detail put into the book.

All the gory details about cannibalism.

It's an important incident in U.S. history and it inspired the novel "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville.

It contains some gruesome accounts of cannibalism.

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Created Nov 13, 2015 at 9:51am • Submit your own review...